Does language determines mouth & throat evolution?

Maybe it's just me, but probably the evolution of all our facial muscles, mouth size & shape, vocal cords, etc. is in someway determined by the language and accent you speak.
Maybe the German people are developing physical features for pronouncing those "ch's", or are the British developing stronger teeth and tongue for the strong pronunciation of t's and d's?

>>>Sunday, May 11, 2003, 03:18 GMT

I have never thought about that before, but I think this is false because you are talking about physical characteristics defining human speach. If you will, take this example:

The Germans have their German language. A foreigner comes to German with his wife (let's say he is from Turkey). He never learns to speak German, and his children speak German with a Turkish accent. One oh is children marries a daughter of two other Turkish immigrants, and they have a child. The child speaks perfect German, without a Turkish accent. So, an "ethnic" German and a "non-ethnic" German now speak the same German language with the same exact accent, and they are both native speakers of German.

So you see, speaking language has little to do with physical characteristics.

FarfetchedSunday, May 11, 2003, 03:30 GMT

it's evolution, THOUGHOUT THOUSANDS OF GENERATIONS, of course somebody could speak german perfectly, but not having those characteristics.

Is like skin colour: a line of people that had been under the sun for many generations develop darker skin (genetically darker skin, not just temporarly darkened by the sun), and are addapted to sun, then let's say a group of blonde white people comes to this sun area, they can survive under the sun, and get temporarly darkened by the sun, but they are not getetically addapted to it and cannot get along under it perfectly, it seems they can the sun hurts their skin; if they stay there though generations they will develop dark skin.

>>>Sunday, May 11, 2003, 03:32 GMT

I do not believe in this type of evolution.

FarfetchedSunday, May 11, 2003, 03:38 GMT

Nothing at all is excluded from evolution, why do you think black people have wider mouths and fuller lips, or more powerful voices, just by a miracle or mutation...? no, it's evolution, evolution is not just australopithecus...homo sapiens sapiens, it's more than that, think about it please.

>>>Sunday, May 11, 2003, 03:43 GMT

Sorry, I am not going to write in this topic as I do not argue with people and my religious belief is very strong.

FarfetchedSunday, May 11, 2003, 03:49 GMT

I'm just trying to disscuss politely, but you're close-minded, sorry, I apologize if I sounded rude.

When I said miracle, I was not talking about that kind or religious miracles, just about something 'magical' if I can say.

FarfetchedSunday, May 11, 2003, 03:50 GMT

I'm just trying to disscuss politely, but you're close-minded, sorry, I apologize if I sounded rude.

When I said miracle, I was not talking about that kind or religious miracles, just about something 'magical' if I can say.

>>>Sunday, May 11, 2003, 04:32 GMT

I just have to comment on something. You are apoligizing to me for sounding rude, yet you call me "close-minded." Apology not accepted, and I think of myself as an open-minded person, who is religious.

KabamSunday, May 11, 2003, 10:34 GMT

About evolution, scientists are now conviced that there were humans of all colors since the begining of humanity. A great amount of monkeys have progressively evoluate into the state of human being in the same time. That's why - fortunately - all weren't of the same colors of skin, eyes and hair.
So there is not such an evolution that your skin can change of color depending on where you live.

hp20Sunday, May 11, 2003, 17:05 GMT

i don't think that the theory on throat/mouth evolution is true, because i've heard that babies when they're born can make all sounds known to man but that these are conditioned out as the child becomes dominant in a language (ie, an american baby when born can make the spanish "rrr" sound and the hebrew "ch" sound, but by the time he is 10 he most likely cannot without some sort of language training because it's been conditioned out of him). if we're all born with the inherent ability to make these sounds, you would assume that evolution had not designed our mouths/throats for a particular set. plus, evolution usually occurs for survival purposes, for example someone would have a hard time surviving the snow-filled winds of the tundra with a european hook nose, which is why eskimos have developed flatter noses. since speech does not (usually) determine whether we live or die, these evolutionary changes would not have been necessary.

KabamSunday, May 11, 2003, 18:08 GMT

I agree.

MunchkinLadSunday, May 11, 2003, 19:11 GMT

Just consider this though: the Ethiopean Jews - assuming they have the same genetic ancestry as other Jews (which I think has been proven scientifically) then their skin colour must have changed over a few thousand years to suit their climate. Unless they intermarried but retained the marker genes.

Evolution isn't that someone lives in a hot country and passes on their tan to their kids - Lamarck proposed that theory but it's now considered unrealistic. Evolution is that in a hot climate those with lighter skins are more likely to die of skin cancer, so with random genetic variations which we see in every family, on average they get darker.

KTMonday, May 12, 2003, 04:32 GMT

We all know that most second-generation Americans can speak perfect American English without any foreign accent, even if their parents don't speak with American accents. I'm Chinese and assuming I married a Chinese person and had Chinese kids, if I raised my kids in Germany since they were little, I'm sure they can speak German like a native. That doesn't require any evolution of my kids' mouths and throats.

ClarkMonday, May 12, 2003, 06:19 GMT

This is crazy! Humans are humans, and we can speak any language we want. Plus, children have the best language-learning abilities. On top of that, humans may look diverse (ie. and Asian and an African), but we are all HUMAN!!!!!!!!!!!! It all comes back to that old story; if a martian were to look at the world, he would just see one race of people with one language.